Software-defined everything (SDE) -- the use of software to provision and manage pretty much all IT infrastructure -- is poised to make outsourcing much easier for some customers and for some workloads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Top 10 free troubleshooting tools for Windows 10Into every Windows 10 user's life a little rain must fall. Sometimes it comes down in buckets.Windows itself has many built-in troubleshooting tools, but they can be tricky to find and even trickier to harness in ways that'll help you solve a problem -- instead of simply sitting there looking pretty and/or perplexed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As a journalist, you know the drill at media briefings. Hosted and paid-for by a vendor, and with speakers from the company - as well as (usually) an end-user or an academic, the idea is to bring journalists together with the experts to discuss the prominent matters in the industry. And if those issues and industry challenges can be resolved with one of the vendor’s solutions then everyone’s a winner.The vendor gets the business, the press coverage and the thought leadership, while the journalist gets the story, the contacts and the free lunch. The speakers get some media air-time. It’s no surprise then, that these are usually enjoyable, if tame, affairs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nougat is here—finally! And we’re not just talking about the opt-in beta. Google has finally released Android 7.0 Nougat for Nexus users. With it comes a slew of new features, tweaks, and changes that should help make your Android experience even better than before.There’s been plenty of information published on Nougat’s new offerings—like its support for split-screen apps and direct reply messaging—but there are also a number of smaller features that are just as helpful that haven’t been touted as loudly. Here’s a look at some of those hidden features you should be using if you’ve got Nougat running on your Android device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Project management has many facets and anyone of them could derail even the best-laid plans. Recognizing the signs of an impending disaster can give a project manager the "heads up" before it happens. To help you spot the telltale signs, here are some of the more common signs grouped into three key categories.1. High-level objectives
Missing strategic tie-in: Difficulty easily and clearly tie the project purpose and goals back to company-wide objectives is one of the biggest signals that project needs to be re-evaluated. Forging ahead without having a clear understanding of the project is beneficial to the company is a huge mistake in the making.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Invisibility cloaks sound like a lot of fun, and the good news is that they really do exist. But the reality, for now at least, is not nearly as fantastical as what you imagine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Do you ever feel like there aren't enough hours in a day? If you're looking to get more out of your work day, here are five apps -- recommended by Chris Battles, vice president and general manager, communications cloud division at Citrix, that he uses to improve his own productivity.Plan your days ahead of time
According to best-selling time management author Brian Tracy, "The more time you take to make a list of everything you have to do, in advance, the more effective and efficient you will be." Battles suggests trying Wunderlist to help you stay organized during the week. You can create, organize and share your lists before you start your day -- from your daily to-do list to managing multiple, ongoing projects and goals -- ultimately helping you to stay on track and focused.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Deception technologies such as honeypots are becoming increasingly popular with enterprises as the products get more flexible and the tools allow security analysts swamped with incident reports to zero in on cases of actual ongoing infiltration.According to a report released in August by research firm Technavio, the deception technology market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 9 percent, and is predicted to reach $1.33 billion by 2020.The technology includes not only the traditional honeypots but also a new class of multi-layered, distributed endpoint decoys, according to Technavio analyst Amrita Choudhury.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Easy to access, widely used, and outside of enterprise control, social media sites are gold mines for malicious actors. People share a lot of seemingly innocuous information, which is exactly the kind of data that hackers love to collect and use in phishing or spear phishing campaigns. A recent NopSec 2016 State of Vulnerability Risk Management Report found that organizations use inadequate risk evaluation scoring systems. The report claimed that social media -- which often isn't included in any risk evaluation system -- is now a top platform for cybersecurity.So, what's the correlation between social media and the rise in malware?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researchers have found a sophisticated malware program that may have been used recently by a gang of hackers to steal more than US$350,000 from ATMs in Thailand.A sample of the new malware, dubbed Ripper, was uploaded to the VirusTotal database from an Internet Protocol address in Thailand last week, shortly before local media reported that hackers used malware to steal 12.29 million Baht from 21 ATMs in the country.The incident forced the state-owned Government Savings Bank to temporarily shut down all of its ATMs made by one vendor so they could be checked for malware, the Bangkok Post reported last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Infityle waterproof Dry Bag sacks & smart phone Case creates a perfect combination of waterproof bags for any adventurer, it's soft, flexible & strong, even in the harshest of conditions, whether you are in the freezing conditions of Alaska or in a desert keeping the dust out. Thermo welding technology ensures the strong seams are watertight. Reinforced construction at all stress points make it even tougher. Don't worry about your outdoor gears and fishing gear -- its taken care of. This bundle includes an Infityle Water proof dry tube, a waterproof smartphone bag, and a multifunction survival pocket tool. Averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from Amazon (read reviews). It's typical list price of $36.99 has been reduced by up to 45% depending on size and color. See the discounted compression bag bundle now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.ASG-Mobius 6.0Key features: ASG-Mobius 6.0 is a purpose-built content management system with proven scalability supporting platform, device and data independence. New AWS support enables cloud based solutions, on premise or hybrid implementations. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The iPhone's autocorrect feature is often a help, but also a major source of embarrassment. So much so there is a whole website dedicated to nothing but embarrassing autocorrect moments.Those are merely embarrassing moments. Microsoft Excel, the de facto spreadsheet application in the world, is making a mess of scientific papers all over the world thanks to the software's own auto-format and autocorrect functions.According to the BBC, a report from the Melbourne, Australia-based academic institute Baker IDI, found four 704 errors in genetic names in 3,597 published scientific papers. That's almost 20 percent of all papers. For example, Excel changed the name of a gene called SEPT2 (short for Septin) to a date, September 2.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
About 350 million people use the Opera browser. Of those, 1.7 million received an email from Opera, warning that attackers breached Opera’s cloud Sync service server. Even if a person didn’t check their email, they would have known something was up since Opera forced a password reset for Sync users.Opera announced the breach on Friday. The company said it detected and then “quickly blocked” an attack last week, but “some data, including some of our sync users’ passwords and account information, such as login names, may have been compromised.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I recently had a visit from my local animal control department. A youthful, uniformed guy rang the doorbell and handed me a letter. He told me that there had been a complaint from a neighbor (he, of course, was not at liberty to reveal the identity of the neighbor) about my dog barking.
This was unexpected because my dog, Harvey (he’s an Australian Shepherd), doesn’t bark that much and when he does, it’s usually just a couple of midrange yelps. He mostly barks when he exits the back door (he always assumes that there’s some critter that needs to be dealt with) and occasionally, if the birds dare to land on our trees, he'll shout a few times but even then, it’s a brief protest rather than a drawn out rager. I’d argue that other neighbors' dogs are far noisier than my dog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter's approach.Big data has become a priority for most organizations, which are increasingly aware of the central role data can play in their success. But firms continue to struggle with how to best protect, manage and analyze data within today's modern architectures. Not doing so can result in extended downtime and potential data loss costing the organization millions of dollars.Unlike traditional data platforms (Oracle, SQL*Server, etc.), which are managed by IT professionals, big data platforms (Hadoop, Cassandra, Couchbase, HPE Vertica, etc.) are often managed by engineers or DevOps groups and there are some common misconceptions around big data backup and recovery that need to be cleared up. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Virginia couple has pled guilty to H-1B fraud charges in a scheme that made them millions, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.A married couple -- Raju Kosuri, 44, and Smriti Jharia, 45 -- created a visa-for-sale system involving some 900 H-1B visa petitions over a multi-year period, according to the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.Court records detail an elaborate operation that required a series of fictions to pull off.Through a series of shell companies that purported to provide IT staffing and services to corporate clients, the defendants H-1B visa petitions on behalf of workers. These workers had to pay the visa fees, legal and administrative costs -- as much as $4,000 -- in violation of the visa program's rules.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Big data is best known for its volume, variety, and velocity -- collectively referred to as the "3 Vs" -- and all three of those traits make security an elusive goal. Targeting companies grappling with that challenge, the Cloud Security Alliance on Friday released a new report offering 100 best practices.As its name would suggest, the CSA focuses on promoting the use of security best practices within the cloud computing world; corporate members include VMware, Microsoft, AWS, and Red Hat. In an earlier report, the CSA broke down big data security risks into a set of the top 10 major challenges. Now, for each of those, it presents 10 best practices designed to help enterprises keep their information safe.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
HardwareImage by Mark GibbsIn my "Ultimate Guide to Raspberry Pi Operating Systems" (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) I listed pretty much every noteworthy operating system and OS variant available for the Raspberry Pi family of single board computers. But what of the hardware all this OS goodness runs on? It's not like there's just one Raspberry Pi board. So, if you don't know your Model A from your Zero from your generation 3 Model B, this is the guide for you.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Dropbox is asking users who signed up before mid-2012 to change their passwords if they haven’t done so since then.The cloud storage service said it was asking users to change their passwords as a preventive measure, and not because there is any indication that their accounts were improperly accessed.Dropbox said it was taking the measure because its security teams learned about an old set of Dropbox user credentials, consisting of email addresses and hashed and salted passwords, which it believes were obtained in 2012 and could be linked to an incident the company reported around the time.In July 2012, Dropbox said its investigation found that usernames and passwords recently stolen from other websites were used to sign in to a small number of of Dropbox accounts. It said it had contacted the users affected to help them protect their accounts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here